The mission of the San Mateo County Historical Association is to inspire wonder and discovery
of the cultural and natural history of San Mateo County.

Object Record

Catalog Number

2017.012.032

Description

Ceramic Beer Bottle, c. 1880-1899. Two-tone ceramic cylindrical beer bottle with tapered shoulders and an embossed ring just below the tapered lip. Top half a golden tan while bottom half is natural clay. Towards the bottom of one side of the bottle, there is an engraved stamp in a circle in small and bold lettering that says "...KENNEDY". Inside the circle, in small and bold lettering, the text reads "BARROWFIELD / 14...".

"...KENNEDY" & "BARROWFIELD / 14..." (engraved in small and bold lettering on a stamp on the bottom portion of the bottle)

Provenance

Part of donation that included 6 cases of beer and whiskey bottles dating from 1850 through the 1890s. These are the type of bottles that would have been present in San Mateo County during that time period.

Notes

"As with wine and champagne bottles, beer and ale were bottled in a relatively limited array of bottle shapes. Essentially all beer/ale bottles are round (cylindrical) in cross section; square, rectangular, or other body shapes are almost unknown. Beer and ale, being carbonated (known as "pressure ware" in the bottle making industry), pretty much had to be contained in cylindrical heavy glass bottles since such a shape is inherently stronger than other shapes - all other things being equal, e.g., bottle size, glass thickness and quality (Tooley 1953; Glass Industry 1959).

Beer bottles were of thick glass also since they had to be able to survive extensive post-bottling handling and use since these bottles were typically re-used many times, as evidenced by extensive base and side wear to many examples….Another limiting factor to beer/ale bottle variety was that a large majority of the bottles produced during the period covered by this website were in some shade of amber, aqua, or colorless glass, with earlier (pre-1870) bottles tending towards some shade of green, olive green, black glass, and aqua. Other colors - including cobalt blue - are unusual but occasionally seen.

Beer and ale - and the related stout, porter, and weiss - are the yeast fermented products of various grains, most commonly malted barley and/or wheat. Beer brewing began in the U.S. during early colonial days when beer was consumed in large quantities on all sorts of occasions and during almost all meals. However, using bottles to contain beer was uncommon during that time as beer was dispensed from kegs in taverns and inns and bottles were relatively rare and expensive. The types of bottles used for bottling beer in the earliest days would have been the common heavy glass black glass utilitarian bottles of the era which were used for various liquid products. By the late 18th century, beer was being bottled in the northern Atlantic seaboard states in various black glass bottles in enough quantity that some was being exported (Munsey 1970; McKearin & Wilson 1978)." [https://sha.org/bottle/beer.htm 5/22/2017]